PaleyFest 2015: GLEE’s Darren Criss and Lea Michele Preview a Special Series Finale Song

We’re less than a week away from GLEE’s two-hour series finale, and there will be a special final song for series star Lea Michele (Rachel): “This Time,” a tune penned for her/her character by co-star Darren Criss (Blaine).

“My main thing was to write this song for Lea, because any songwriter would be lucky to have Lea Michele sing their song,” Criss shared during Friday night’s PaleyFest panel honoring the series. “I basically wrote a love note to the entire experience…It’s a tough thing, but I tried to encapsulate how I felt about the show, how the characters would feel about the show, how the actors themselves feel in real-life about the show. I wrote it for everyone here, who has been experiencing it for all this time.”

“When I was thinking about what I wanted Rachel’s last solo to be, I was really wracking my brain, and Darren said to me, ‘I really want to write a song for Rachel, I really want to get it into the last episode, and what would you want it to be about?'” Michele recalled. “And I couldn’t think of anything. And Darren wrote this song, and he was like, ‘I wrote it, you have to listen to it,’ and I was like, ‘I feel like I’m going to get too sad, I can’t listen to it now.’ Eventually, when it was finalized for the show, I went, ‘Okay, I’m going to listen to it,’ and it’s the last song I sang on GLEE, it’s the last song I recorded in the studio. There would be no other song that could have perfectly encapsulated the entire experience. Darren, honestly, gave me the greatest gift.”

But because the song was so spot-on, it proved to be a bit emotional when it came time to actually film Michele singing it.

“I was there that day — and that was the day I fell to my knees and cried…I seriously had to call my mother — but it was the most special day,” Michele shared. “It was such a favor, because I got to sing everything to everyone here and everyone who will watch it that I wanted to say, but can’t think of the words, and he wrote them. It was so special, it was so perfect, and I was hysterically crying. I literally ran to the back of auditorium, and Darren was next to me, and was like, ‘I’m not going to look at you right now, but thank you.’ We had to talk to each other days later…it’s so special, it’s the most amazing memory.”

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GLEE’s series finale airs Friday, March 20th at 8 PM on Fox.

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